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TOOELE COUNTY — With limited budgets and manpower, fighting fires in small communities is never easy.
In the North Tooele Fire District, the challenges also include 1,700 square miles of coverage area — most of it far from the district’s 15,000 residents.
“We share a border out there with Wendover City Fire,” said North Tooele Fire District Chief Randy Willden.
While the department has boasted full-time firefighters for some time now, unitil recently overnight hours had only been covered by volunteers and off-duty workers.
“Myself and my assistant chief — we’d have to get up and go!” Willden said.
Willden said the arrangement resulted in missed calls — at least 10 each of the past two years — as well as slower response times at night.
Firefighters, Willden said, would have to accept the call from home, go to the fire station, grab a vehicle and then head to the scene, which could be as far away as 70 miles.
“We were (at) seven-, eight-minute response times,” Willden said, quantifying the metric as the time from call-out to firefighters departing the station. “That’s just not acceptable.”
Willden said the response time should be close to two minutes, no matter the time of day.
Recently, changes in the district’s budget allowed for full-time firefighters to be staffed around the clock, seven days per week.
“This has reduced our response times,” the chief said.
Willden said the changes did not require any additional funds and feedback to date has been favorable.
“Most people are overwhelmingly satisfied with it,” Willden said.
